IBM Lotus Software "Tired of Feeding the Machine?"

IBM Lotus Symphony provides word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation applications at no charge. Lotus Symphony may be able to save your company considerable money that can be better spent elsewhere. Mike Chvany, Director/Editor. Bridge Street Productions.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Lotus
• Symphony
• IBM
• OpenOffice
• ODF
• Microsoft
• Office
• Enterprise
• Agreements
• Productivity
• tools

[atomkarinca]

It's amazing that a major company is making free software and it's cross-platform.

[Vnix]

IBM + Linux support = Epic Win.

[rearden215]

I had the original Symphony back in 1985 and if this reiteration of tired old Lotus code is anything like the original iteration of tired code...... arrrrgghh.

And, yes, this is probably one of the most boring ads I have ever suffered through, regardless of the product being shilled.

Long Live Lotus Agenda!

[KakarottoCL]

what a BORING video.. is this supposed to beat MSO?

[aussiebear22]

Sun has one advantage over MS. They have open sourced most of Java under the same license as Linux. (ie: GPL v2).

They're currently working with Red Hat people to make it completely open. (There are bits left that are proprietary, and time is needed to write replacements for them).

[DudleyMMoore]

Excellent. I *like* fear.

They do have a response, and that is to market their new pay as you go online office. they can do less, ( i.e. shipping and marketing ), and even do less debugging ( starting from scratch again...) but then you come up with basically what Symphony or Zoho is,

without Java...er... without Suns Java.

Of course MSs java runtime is utter junk, and despite Suns java having horeendus speed problems, with their updates, its still better than Mico$oft junk

[aussiebear22]

You don't have to hope. The existence of FOSS alone makes MS nervous. (If you read their 10-K financial statement for 2007 financial year, they mention open source being a problem to them).

They really are freaking out, as they have no response. (They've tried FUD and such, but its been ineffective.)

The real fight comes to who controls the protocols, formats and standards. (MS isn't making it easy. Especially with their nonsense that is OOXML).

[DudleyMMoore]

Try completely deleting Java from your system, and reinstalling a fresh copy. Makes it much faster. ( you can also tap the Java intrepreter for a higher processing priority... :)

[DudleyMMoore]

Not my point at all. I would rather M$ charges based upon what is Reasonable. Microsoft business model relies on shipping crap, and having people debug their junk. I hope that FOSS software makes M$ nervious enought to improve their products. In looking for the better product? I like Symphony. It took a bit of work to speed up java, and If I needed it for work, I would of course have my company pay for it.

M$s only option is pay for junk and pay for support.

[Phobos11]

you mean, like Sun Microsystems, right?

[aussiebear22]

Just because some people can afford something, doesn't mean they should fork out money for it. ie: $26.71 per seat is still paying.

Microsoft's business model relies on software licenses and agreements. Its their bread and butter.

This is why IBM has released Lotus Symphony for free. This is why Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is considered a big threat to MS.

IBM now also sells support contracts for Lotus Symphony, but it is your choice if you want it. MS doesn't offer this option.